Heavyweight: People often ask me which fighter I
think is the “most violent in MMA history” or if there was an
All-Violence Team logo, a la the NBA, which fighter’s silhouette
would stand in for Lakers great Jerry West. For whatever reason, it
always feels right to say Wanderlei
Silva. Yet, year-in and year-out, save for an aberrant 2011
campaign, there is not a more destructive force in the sport than
Velasquez. His May rematch with Antonio
Silva was every bit as nasty as expected, but Velasquez
excelled in his October rubber match with Junior dos
Santos, offering not just Sherdog.com’s 2013 “Beatdown of the
Year” but a more grueling modern incarnation of Igor
Vovchanchyn-Enson Inoue --
a whole new standard for decimating an opponent. Speaking of
basketball, FightMetric credited him with the UFC’s first
triple-double against dos Santos, as he became the first fighter in
UFC history to post triple digits in significant strikes landed and
double digits in takedowns executed in a single fight, with 111
significant strikes and 11 takedowns. He is a human wood chipper,
the FightMetric wet dream and a very real nightmare for the modern
MMA heavyweight.

Light Heavyweight: In the last two years, Jones
has not been able to sniff at his standard-bearing 2011 campaign,
perhaps the most violent in MMA history. Yet, “Bones” is our first
four-time All-Violence rep. In April, he schoolyard bullied
self-professed “American Gangster” Chael Sonnen
with his left big toe sticking out of the skin courtesy of a
compound fracture -- a violent flair just for kicks, pun partially
intended. However, Jones’ fourth first-team appearance was sealed
in his 2013 “Fight of the Year” win over Alexander
Gustafsson. Their 244 combined significant strikes is a light
heavyweight record by FightMetric count, and Jones’ 134 is the
second most ever in a 205-pound contest. There have only even been
seven individual 100-plus significant strike performances in the
division’s history, and two of them were in the same fight. The key
moment from the best round of the year in the best fight of the
year was Jones landing a spinning back elbow for crying out loud.
Thanks as always, Jon. Next.

Photo: D.
Mandel/Sherdog.com

Belfort menaced middleweights.

Middleweight: Honestly, the
testosterone debate in MMA might die down a bit if Belfort would
just stop chopping elite middleweights’ heads off with his legs.
Only four other fighters have two KOs via head kick in the Octagon,
yet Belfort did it three times consecutively this year to three
top-10 fighters. His spinning heel kick on Luke
Rockhold in May was one of the year’s very best knockouts,
period. He even became the first man to stop legendary hard ass
Dan
Henderson, this after 15 years and 40 fights of Henderson
eating haymakers from a who’s who of MMA elite. It took all of 77
seconds. Belfort is one of MMA’s most over-the-top evangelical
fighters, but in 2013, he fought like a man possessed by something
much crueler and demonic.

Welterweight: Brown’s 2013 campaign was tragically
truncated due to two herniated discs in his back, nixing a fight
with Carlos
Condit that could have been bonkers; and yes, we have come to
find out he is not exactly the king of gender politics in the
sport, either.

Still, we are talking about a cartoonishly violent Rust Belt
brawler with borderline prison tattoos whose nickname stems from
surviving a heroin overdose; the man is a gift and a curse. That
gift, however, validates his second consecutive first-team
appearance. He bashed the typically sturdy Mike Pyle in 29
seconds, but Brown’s piece de resistance was his graphic six
minutes with Jordan Mein
in April. Brown was actually dropped for the first time in the
Octagon by a body shot, from a surgical striker like Mein no less,
then shrugged it off and proceeded to elbow Mein to the body until
he had to be rescued. Mein had not been knocked out since he was 17
years old. Brown is the sort of man you usually see in videos
edited by Steve Alien.

Lightweight: Pettis was another man who was
cruelly taken from us prematurely in 2013, with a slated December
title defense against Josh Thomson
dying on the vine due to a knee injury. Nonetheless, he styled on
striking-savvy Donald
Cerrone in January and became the first man to knock out
“Cowboy,” utilizing a surgical roundhouse kick to the body. Then,
he called his own shot in ridiculous fashion. He tore his PCL
preparing for a 145-pound title challenge against Jose Aldo and
then came in on seven weeks’ notice to lock a stone-cold textbook
armbar on Benson
Henderson to win the UFC lightweight title in his hometown of
Milwaukee. Henderson, usually impervious to submissions and in his
first fight as a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, was forced to yell
“Tap, tap, tap!” in the first round. Plain and simple, when Pettis
is in the cage, animated .gifs happen.

Featherweight: Credit his January split decision
loss to then-Bellator champ Pat Curran
with putting Freire in the zone for the rest of the year. After
dropping a technical striking battle with Curran, Freire went on
the warpath to finish 4-1 on the year and take another Bellator
145-pound tournament title. He tortured tough wrestler Jared
Downing like a wounded animal, needed only 79 seconds to become
the first man to stop defensive specialist Diego Nunes,
dominated
Fabricio de Assis Costa da Silva every which way and then
pulverized Justin
Wilcox in a fight so brutal it felt like 20 minutes instead of
two. His four wins came in the span of three-and-a-half months,
which is quite brag-worthy.

Bantamweight: An All-Violence first-teamer in
2011, Faber enjoyed one of the year’s best bounce-back campaigns to
reclaim top honors at 135 pounds. Despite his well-discussed
failings in title fights, Faber treats non-championship opposition
much more inhospitably than most fighters. He does not just beat
guys he is supposed to be beat, he really beats them. He
climbed on Ivan
Menjivar like playground equipment to choke him out, becoming
the only guy other than a 170-pound Jason Black
in 2002 to tap him; he boxed up Scott
Jorgensen’s face before casually strangling him; and he smashed
young dynamo Michael
McDonald -- another former All-Violence entrant -- in the head
and guillotined him. Iuri
Alcantara, who even managed to take the first round from “The
California Kid” in August, should consider it a major feather in
his cap that he did not get mauled like the rest of the opponents
on Faber’s 2013 ledger.

Flyweight: After making a habit of
stirring-but-not-thrilling 15- and 25-minute decisions, I do wonder
if the UFC flyweight champion set the bar too high for himself.
Johnson wore many different violent styles in 2013. In January, he
overcame multiple knockdowns from all-galaxy super puncher John Dodson
to wear out “The Magician” and take a well-appointed decision. In
July, few expected fairly novice challenger John Moraga
to put up a major fight, but Johnson blew him out before simply
willing his way to a fifth-round armbar to close the show in style.
Never one to rest on recent improvements and success, Johnson all
but squashed his rivalry with Joseph
Benavidez, a former All-Violence entrant himself, by wrecking
the
Team Alpha Male standout in just over two minutes with a
devastating right hook and two coffin nails in December. The aerial
shot of Benavidez’s figurative corpse was as grim a sight as any in
the Octagon over the past 12 months.